


We Are a Hurricane

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, M/M, Office Sex, Poetic Sex, Prompt Fill, bottom!daryl, lawyer!Daryl, tags idfk, top!rick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:13:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: "Rick kisses him before the sound of his voice even dies in the air between them.Daryl’s lips feel like a million stars exploding against his own. Rick can feel trails of cosmic dust streaking across his skin like comet tails. Every single touch lingers, a story written across his skin that will never be erased by the passage of time."Or the one where Rick falls in love with his divorce lawyer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I got a tumblr prompt for an AU where Daryl is a divorce lawyer who has sex with Rick in his office so here we are.

“You’re a free man now, huh?”   
  
And Rick kisses him before the sound of his voice even dies in the air between them.

Daryl’s lips feel like a million stars exploding against his own. Rick can feel trails of cosmic dust streaking across his skin like comet tails. Every single touch lingers, a story written across his skin that will never be erased by the passage of time.

He rakes his fingers through the other man’s hair and hears him sigh. It’s a note more beautiful than any musician has ever played in the history of the human race, something unachievable by anyone other than Daryl Dixon. Rick will never hear music the same way again. 

* * *

“I’m here to see Mr. Dixon,” Rick said, standing in the front of the small law office. He recognized the woman leaning over talking to the secretary. Her face was on a bus seat somewhere around town, though he couldn’t remember her name. 

“Do you have an appointment?” the secretary asked. He was a young Asian boy who looked like he was just starting to settle into his surroundings, a slight air of nervousness still pervading his movements and expressions. Rick wondered if he was studying law and interning here in the mean time.

“No,” Rick said. “Sign outside said walk-ins are welcome. But if I need to come back...”  
  
“No, no, he’s here,” the woman said, standing up to her full height. In her sharp blue pencil skirt and matching cape, she looked out of place for small town Georgia even in somewhere as formal as a law office. Her black hair was cut short atop her head, and her crisp white blouse contrasted sharply with her dark skin. Everything about her said "power." 

“I’ll take you back,” the receptionist said.   
  
“I’ll take him. I’d rather you finished highlighting those files,” she said, motioning for Rick to follow her. “Thank you, Mr. Rhee.”   
  


* * *

  
The office is quiet other than the sound of Daryl panting as Rick sucks on the skin under his ear. The officer is grateful for the silence that lets him hear breath, every quiet whimper, every rustle of Daryl’s slacks against his jeans.

He reaches for the other man’s already loosened tie, pulling it free of the starched pale blue collar of Daryl’s shirt. Silk winds its way around the wrists of his partner, binding them behind his back. His already broad shoulders transform into monoliths. Rick shoves him harder against his desk, and the wooden drawers rattle in their frames.   
  


* * *

  
Mr. Dixon’s office was tucked away in the back near a coffee station that smelled heavily of dark roast and vanilla bean. Rick inhaled the scent, the familiar aromas a small comfort after everything else he’d had to deal with recently with Lori.   
  
The woman raised her hand and knocked, and Rick tried again to remember her ad. He wasn’t sure what legal service she provided, but something about her demeanor told him she would be an absolute powerhouse in a courtroom if he ever needed her. He almost wondered if her talents weren’t wasted in tiny King County.

“Yeah?” the voice said, and Rick caught the hint of a thick backwoods accent tucked away beneath an attempt to hide it.

“A walk-in for you,” she said.   
  
Where the woman’s heels clicked with every step, Mr. Dixon didn’t make a single sound on his way to the frosted door emblazoned with “Daryl Dixon, J.D. Family and Divorce Attorney.”

He pulled it open, nodding at Rick and then the woman. The male looked more like Rick had expected a lawyer in his town to look. Where his partner wouldn’t have felt out of place on the pages of some high fashion magazine, he had on navy blue slacks and a white button up. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealed tanned muscular forearms. A blue silk tie hung from his neck, though it had clearly been loosened a bit over the course of the afternoon.  
  
“Thanks, Michonne,” he said, before turning his attention back on the officer. “C’mon in. Help yourself to a cup of coffee if you want it.”

  
Rick shook his head and followed the man into his office where he shut the door behind them. The cop sat down in one of the two cushioned leather chairs in front of Mr. Dixon’s desk, taking in the sparse walls and the man’s navy suit jacket slung over the back of his chair. The coat rack in the corner was bare.   
  


* * *

Rick kicks the chair farther away from the desk, flinging it out of orbit where it spins wildly into the file cabinets. The impact is a metallic earthquake that fells the only photo in the office. A younger version of the man before him in a graduation cap tumbles to the floor.

His knee slips between the lawyer’s legs where the other man greedily ruts against his thigh, moaning his name softly into his ear. The officer can’t help but kiss him again and again, swallowing up his waterfall of sounds like a man on the cusp of dying from thirst.

The river tastes faintly of vanilla.

* * *

 

“What brings you in?” Mr. Dixon asked, settling back down into his own chair and picking up a worn leather portfolio holding a white legal pad.   
  
“Divorce,” Rick said. “Thought it was gonna be a simple no contest, but she...” He shook his head. He’d been willing to give her the house so Carl wouldn’t have to be uprooted during the whole thing.

He’d been willing to part with the SUV too. He had his pickup truck, and the SUV would be more practical for carting Carl and his friends around. But there were things Lori had asked for that Rick couldn’t and wouldn’t abide.   
  
“What’s she want?” 

“Our son,” he said. “I was fine with joint custody. It hurt, but there wasn’t a way around it that didn’t disrupt his life any more than it already will be. But she doesn’t want to give me that. She doesn’t want me to see him at all.”   
  
“Any reason why?” 

“She thinks I had an affair with my partner,” Rick said. “Why she wanted the divorce, and I would’ve tried harder to convince her otherwise, but we were already falling apart long before the accusations started flying.”   
  
“And did you?” Mr. Dixon asked. “Keep in mind I ain’t the judge. Need to know the truth to do my job.”   
  
“No,” Rick said, sighing deeply because it was his fault Lori’s mind had ever gone there. His fault for opening his mouth when she was venting about some stupid soup commercial with two dads and how she was tired of having things like homosexuality normalized and shoved down her throat. His fault for telling her that it hurt him to hear that because he wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow.

Maybe if he’d never mentioned Shane’s name specifically, he wouldn’t be in this mess. But, God, Shane had been a high school crush. Any feelings he’d had regarding Walsh had died out a long, long time ago.

“But even if I had, I shouldn’t be barred from seeing my own kid over it,” Rick said. “It’s not really about him, my partner. It’s about her not wanting me to make our son gay, like being around me will flip a switch in his head and he’ll suddenly start listening to the Rent soundtrack on repeat and while entertaining dreams of being a goddamn leather daddy.”

Mr. Dixon’s eyebrows went up, and his blue eyes flicked from his notes to Rick. The whole thing happened so fast that Rick wasn’t sure he didn’t imagine it. By the time he’d blinked, Daryl’s focus was back on his notes, his face blank.   
  
“She’s gonna try to tell the judge that,” Rick said. “That’ll probably be her whole case against me. That I’m immoral and our son is going straight to hell if I ever talk to him again.”   
  
“Won’t matter,” Mr. Dixon said, calm and unworried in a way that made Rick genuinely jealous. “She with Harrison? Do you know?”   
  
“You or her, isn’t it?” Rick asked. Their town had exactly two divorce lawyers. Which, all things considered, was exactly how many the typical town needed. “She’s a school teacher. She definitely can’t afford to bring anyone in from the city.”   
  
“Wish I could be there for _that_ meeting,” Mr. Dixon said, clearly amused.   
  
“What? My wife and Harrison?” Rick asked.   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Harrison’s bisexual,” Mr. Dixon said. "Pretty openly."   
  
“You’re kidding.” Rick laughed quietly. And it was probably the first time he’d laughed even a little since he’d gone to pick up Carl for the weekend only to be told to leave a house that still had his name on the deed.   
  
“Want to feel even better?”

* * *

Daryl’s mouth around him is pure heat. It’s the center of a volcano bubbling away, anxiously waiting to spill over and reform the world around it into something new and breathtaking. Moist heat bobs up and down his length and Rick leans forward, bracing himself on the desk while his knees quake from the pressure mounting inside the earth.

Nothing in his life has ever felt as good and as free as this. He rolls his hips forward into Daryl’s open mouth, marveling when the other man takes him in so far that he hits the back of his throat. He can feel the lawyer’s breath traveling from his nostrils down into his lungs, the wind parting over his his most sensitive flesh. Gasping at the sensation, he revels in it until the other man reflexively swallows, finally triggering his gag reflex.

Rick pulls back and helps Daryl up off the floor. 

* * *

Learning that Judge Aaron Lafayette was gay did succeed in making Rick feel much better. Despite being a cog in the wheel of the legal system himself, he wasn’t entirely sure which judge in the area handled divorce and custody cases.

The idea of facing down Philip Blake had kept him awake nights in his motel room. The man had practically founded the King County Tea Party and was known for launching into full-blown tirades outside of the courtroom. He was both charming and cutthroat—a combination Rick hadn’t wanted to deal with.

But Judge Lafayette had a reputation for being fair and honest, and knowing that even Lori’s own attorney would side-eye her for her backwards thinking had Rick feeling a lot more like this whole process was going to be more time-consuming than it would be painful.

* * *

Daryl’s pants practically flow to the floor, a river of black wool pooling around the shiny black ink of his polished shoes. The lights in the office are off, but the security light filtering in through the blinds turns his feet into starlight.   
  
Rick drops closer to the night sky, tasting the other man’s arousal until his tongue knows nothing more than bitter salt and hardened flesh. The night is an ocean of new experiences and Rick drinks Daryl in until he begs him to stop. Until he begs him for something more.   
  
Rick stands back up, raising the anchor and preparing to set sail.   
  


* * *

Rick had never meant to fall in love again so quickly. Shane had encouraged him over and over to get back out there, but he'd truthfully thought he would need much longer.

“You gotta try some different flavors, man,” he said. “Chocolate. Caramel. Rainbow sprinkles, you know what I’m sayin?” Walsh had even gone so far as to offer to be Rick’s wing man at the gay bar one town over if that’s what it took to put a smile back on his best friend's face.   
  
But Rick had told him time and time again that he wasn’t ready. And somewhere in the middle he’d realized that he was ready, that he’d already started to fall, but lying had been much easier than admitting he was falling for his damn divorce lawyer of all people.   
  
Sometime throughout the ordeal, he’d started calling Mr. Dixon by his first name. And he’d started calling that same name out quietly at night in his newly acquired apartment while he stroked his cock so often it started to hurt.   
  
It was unavoidable getting closer to Daryl. They had to meet constantly for Rick to sign this or fill him in on this or that little detail. Daryl needed another copy of the marriage license. Of Carl’s birth certificate. Of his and Lori’s bank statements. 

When he realized Daryl was falling too, holding back had been excruciating. But Michonne had pulled him aside after Daryl invited him to the office for what Rick could only see as a thinly veiled excuse to get him there.   
  
Thinly veiled because Daryl took detailed notes he didn’t even need since his memory was about as sharp as Michonne’s outfits. And because even if Rick hadn’t already told him the date of his and Lori’s marriage already, he already had about twenty copies of their marriage license.   
  
In retrospect, Rick wasn’t entirely sure he’d needed all those copies.   
  
“Don’t go there,” Michonne said. She was discussing something with Glenn again, but the words were directed at Rick. They were far too loud and too pointed to be meant for the receptionist/legal assistant.   
  
The cop stopped in the doorway and looked back at her. Sure enough, she was looking right at him. Her eyes challenged him to disagree.   
  
“Can I speak with you in private for a moment, Mr. Grimes?” she asked. He followed her into her office.   
  
She told him in no uncertain terms that it would be unwise to spark a relationship with Daryl. Yes, she knew how Rick felt. Yes, Daryl wanted him as well. And yes, she really did think the two of them were capable of doing something that stupid.   
  
“Before Daryl told me he had an open office here if I wanted it,” she started, “I defended people who cut off their boyfriend’s heads over what they chose to play on the stereo system or the television. I’ve seen a whole lot of stupid, Rick. You’d be surprised.”   
  
“After it’s all over?” He’d never doubted that he'd once loved Lori with all his being until he met Daryl. Loving Lori was like a picnic on a spring afternoon. How he felt about Daryl was something more, something deep and  _hungry_ that threatened to eat him alive from the inside. “When it’s said and done, can I have him?” 

“If you break his heart, I know a lot of good defense attorneys,” was her only response, but she smiled at him just the same before ushering him out of the office.   
  


* * *

Rick’s never had his fingers inside of something so hot or so tight before. Daryl’s body feels like a house on fire, the walls caving in around every digit Rick works in. And all the cop wants to do is burn until there’s nothing left but the ashes of the man he used to be.

The lawyer writhes and moans at the intrusion, at every crackle and pop of the world burning down.  Every word out of his mouth is an encouragement. _More_ , he wants. _More_.

Rick lifts him up onto the desk and throws gasoline onto the flames. 

* * *

By the time the divorce was finalized, Rick felt like he’d known Daryl his whole life. He knew about his childhood, about how no one including Daryl had ever expected him to even get a four-year degree, let alone go to law school.  
  
He knew about Carol, the guidance counselor who had nudged him to be something more, to go to college, to dream. About Professor Greene, who had recognized Daryl’s raw skill for debate and pushed him to seek out law or politics. Daryl had naturally gravitated toward family law. The divorce part had come with it.   
  
It turned out Daryl and Michonne had gone to law school together. After, she’d been hired by a prestigious firm in the city where she climbed fast and made more money than most people ever do in a lifetime. But dealing with society’s underbelly had exhausted her spirit despite how good at it she was, so she’d shifted her focus and taken Daryl up on the offer that brought her a more quiet life.   
  
Meeting and falling in love with Andrea had been a bonus.   
  
In the city, the fact that his wife’s lawyer was engaged to his own lawyer’s partner would have likely been a conflict of interest. In the country, interconnectedness was almost unavoidable.   
  
In the end, Rick got the best deal a father could hope for in a joint custody battle. Lori kept Carl most of the school year with Rick getting him on alternating weekends, for most the summer (with Lori taking on the alternating weekends then) and for most of Christmas break. Holidays themselves would alternate year-to-year.  
  
To her credit, whether the length of the divorce proceedings wore her down or whether it was just seeing that Rick didn’t go running straight into Shane’s arms after she kicked him out, Lori did apologize in the end.   
  
Or maybe she was just happier herself now that she and Rick were free of the constant fights and all the passive aggressive snips at one another. He knew he was. And, God, he had never known the true meaning of the word “want” until Daryl Dixon. 

“You can pick Carl up from school tomorrow,” she said, even managing a weak smile. “I’ll get him packed tonight.”   
  
“I will. Thank you,” Rick said, nodding at her before she turned to walk away. “And Lori...”  
  
She turned back around.  
  
“I hope you know I don’t hold any of this against you,” he said, catching up with her. “I don’t want to be those divorced parents who put our son in the middle of a strained relationship. We’ll probably never be close again, but let’s keep it civil. Think we can we do that?”   
  
“I can do that,” she said with a curt nod. And then she was walking away again. Rick didn’t stop her that time. Instead, he turned back toward Daryl and watched him gather his notes and papers before shoving them into his briefcase. His suit jacket strained to keep up with his shoulders despite being well-tailored. Rick swallowed thickly.   
  


* * *

Being inside of him feels like finally understanding everything. For a brief moment, the meaning of both life and death are written down on the space where his and Daryl’s bodies entangle. They are time and space meeting and converging and shaping the existence of everything around them. 

Daryl’s legs wrap tightly around his waist, pulling him deeper into the space where both all and nothing exist simultaneously. They are one infinite being, a singularity devouring everything including each other, the Ouroboros circling endlessly.

 _Hunger_. 

Rick whispers his love over and over again as he nears the edge of eternity.   
  


* * *

Having to wait a little longer after so long dancing around Daryl Dixon should have easier than it was. Rick knew it shouldn’t have felt like such a punch to the gut when he found out that Daryl had other clients to meet with that day.

What he’d expected, he wasn’t sure. The law was full of deadlines that had to be met no matter how much he wanted to drag his lawyer away and make him forget every statute he'd ever known. 

“Thank you again,” Rick said, preparing the leave with a heaviness settling over him. For a brief moment, he felt incredibly selfish. He had his son back with a great weekend planned that he’d had mapped out for weeks.

He was looking forward to that weekend more than he could put into words. And if it ever had come down to Carl or Daryl, the choice would have been obvious. But at the same time, he couldn’t help but think that if he didn’t see Daryl that day, he had no idea how long he’d have to wait to tell him how he felt and finally kiss the mouth that had been haunting his dreams and his every waking moment for so long it had become Rick's new normal.   
  
“Just doin my job,” Daryl said. “Really wasn’t a hard one. She was wrong, and he's your kid.”

“I know,” Rick said. “But still.”

“I have a dinner meeting at seven,” Daryl said casually. “I’ll probably go back to the office for a bit after that.”   
  
It felt like an invitation if there ever was one, and so Rick waited patiently, wiling away the hours by setting up the other bedroom in his apartment for Carl and moving all his unpacked boxes out of the way. 

He knocked on the door of the law office around 8:30, his entire body thrumming in time with his heart while he waited for someone to answer.   
  
“C’mon back,” Daryl said, answering the door with his tie loosened and his shirt tails hanging out around his waist. Rick couldn’t disguise the hitch of his breath that came with seeing him like that. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to.   
  
Daryl shut his office door behind them and locked it despite the fact that they were well past closing and the entire building was empty. The click of the deadbolt sliding into place plunged them into a silence so thick Rick could almost taste it.   
  
He stared at Daryl, trying to think of something to say that would break the tension between them in a way that suited just how much Rick felt swirling around inside of him. His stomach felt like a helium balloon threatening to float away from Earth forever.   
  
Daryl spoke first.  
  
“You’re a free man now, huh?”

 

* * *

The world feels like a hurricane. The wind roars violently in every gasped out breath, every groaned name, every thrust, every writhe. Sweat slicks Daryl’s skin like rain and Rick’s hands slip, struggling for purchase on his shoulders, his back. 

They name their storm again and again.   
  
_Rick. Daryl. Rick. Daryl_.   
  
The ocean swells, waves climbing higher and higher as the wind picks up force.   
  
The final crest is hundreds of feet high, threatening to consume anything that gets in its way. They are a force to be reckoned with. They are unstoppable.   
  
Short, blunt fingernails dig into the skin on either side of Rick’s spine, fingertips forming the skeleton of a ship lost at sea.   
  
_Close_ , Daryl threatens. _Close_ , Rick echoes back.

 _Close,_ the hurricane whispers.  
  
The storm closes in, a force so violent that the ocean threatens to devour the earth.   
  
Rick presses his lips to Daryl’s one more time, swallowing both their cries as he spills his love into the other half of his whole.   
  
They kiss. They kiss through the final gusts of the wind, through the eruption, through the flames and the collapse of the cosmos before it explodes and reforms once more. They kiss until the world fades away and they are all that’s left, panting in each others’ arms. They touch each other, hands petting and stroking hair and any patch of skin to be found.   
  
_I love you._

_I love you._

The skies clear. It is a new day.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone asks, I already have a pretty good idea for a longer AU version of this story. It'll be a separate story, so no need to subscribe to this one. 
> 
> But I love the idea of Daryl as a lawyer and I love Michonne in this. And I have a lot of ideas for Andrea and Daryl's working relationship I didn't even get to play with. 
> 
> Hopefully I'll find the time to mess with it in the future. :)


End file.
